Lisa & Mandela (Porto, Portugal)

Lisa & Mandela, dancers and teachers of African rhythms, share the African culture, travelling around Portugal and throughout the world, displaying their great experience in different rhythms like Kizomba, Semba, Kuduro, Afro-House, Tarraxinha, Kizomba and Semba techniques, Funaná, and Traditional Dances. They also give Workshops, perform show dances and group animation.

They dance together as a couple since 2004, representing and introducing a bit of the African roots to the world, beginning with the music, and going through history and culture, until a dance finale.

Their work stands out for their professionalism, experience, and novelty, reflected on their teaching skills, their knowledge of the African history and culture, and the evolution of music and dance. Expressing themselves in several languages, they offer their trainees/audiences a clear and true insight into what dance really is and how it evolved until today.

Their workshops are studied and worked out, according to the time span, the number of attendants and their rhythm or level.

As a rule, the workshops start with contextual information, so that the trainees may understand what they are going to dance and learn the basics of the rhythm.

They learn some notions of general culture about the history of each rhythm (when and how it began, who were the pioneers of that particular music and dance, how it developed itself, where it travelled, etc.)

Kizomba, Semba, Tarraxinha, Man and Woman Technique:
Next the trainees do a warm up whose intent is to make them relax and join the mood and the rhythm; then they learn two or three dance steps per class, depending on their learning and technical skills. The workshop ends with a social dance, and while the trainees are dancing that’s the right moment to make the necessary corrections

Afro-House, Kuduro:
As these are natural body rhythms that flow from the dancers’ own creativity, with the purpose of making the teaching and the sharing of those same rhythms easier, we propose a different class structure: immediately after the warm-up there is a moment of improvisation where the trainees copy their teachers as they dance, followed by a dance scheme prepared for each class – this scheme is a step-by-step process, like all the choreographies for each music. It always results very well, since everybody ends by dancing in group, turning the moment a very dynamic one and allowing everyone to go into these rhythms.